Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members. JOHN BINDER

Pennsylvania police arrested a previously deported criminal alien from Connecticut suspected in the murder of his wife, assault of another woman, and kidnapping his daughter. The entire State of Connecticut has been certified by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a sanctuary jurisdiction.

Police in the Keystone State arrested Oscar Obedio Hernandez, 39, after Bridgeport police issued an amber alert for his daughter, 6-year-old Aylin Hernandez. Police in his resident town of Bridgeport issued the alert after being called to his home. Upon arriving at the scene, police discovered the body of the child’s mother, Nidia Gonzalez. Police suspect Hernandez for stabbing Gonzalez to death, the Hartford Courantreported. Another woman, said to be a friend, was also stabbed repeatedly. She is expected to survive her wounds, Fox News reported.

PA State Police troopers rescue Alyn Hernandez after her father crashed his car during a high-speed chase. (Photo: Abby Drey/Centre Daily Times via AP)

“He was removed from the United States by ICE officers in Hartford on Nov. 27, 2013,” Shawn Neudauer, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman, said in a statement reported by the Courant. “He has prior felony convictions from 2002 for assault and threatening, as well as several misdemeanor convictions. ICE has placed an immigration detainer with the Bridgeport Police Department.”

Following a months’ long effort by Congressman John Culberson (R-TX), the DOJ certified the entire state of Connecticut as a sanctuary jurisdiction – making them ineligible to receive federal law enforcement grants. He said jurisdictions like Connecticut, California, and the other eight jurisdictions certified not to be in compliance with federal law, must “choose between protecting criminal aliens and receiving federal funds.”

Just two days ago, Breitbart News’ Warner Todd Huston reported Connecticut Governor Dannel Maloy sent a memo to law enforcement agencies advising them not to detain a criminal alien based on their immigration status. The sanctuary state governor insisted police should not treat immigration detainers as an official order or warrant. He continued, advising law enforcement officials to deny federal immigration authorities access to criminal aliens in their custody.

Hernandez was not unknown to local police. He had previously been served with a protective order from involving another woman who was not involved in this week’s case.

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, a convicted felon who was re-elected to his job after serving seven years in a federal prison after a 16-count corruption conviction, thanked the police for their rapid action to secure the missing girl.

Police in Pennsylvania spotted Hernandez’ Hyundai about 300 miles from his Connecticut home. A state police trooper initiated a traffic stop, but Hernandez reportedly refused to yield. Other troopers soon joined the pursuit, according to the Courant.

Hernandez eventually lost control and crashed his car into a tractor trailer. The pursuing trooper crashed his vehicle into the rear of Hernandez’ car, and another police vehicle struck the trooper’s car. Aylin Hernandez suffered minor injuries in the crash, Fox News reported.

Immigration officials placed an immigration hold on Hernandez. Bridgeport officials have not indicated if they will honor the detainer. Bridgeport spokesperson Rowena White said Hernandez’ immigration status “was not part of the conversation today.” She called it a separate issue from the current investigation.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.

The Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center
(NGIC) claims that Latino street gangs like the MS-13 are responsible for the
majority of violent crimes in the U.S. and are the primary distributors of most
illicit drugs.

Californiamust stem the flow
of illegal immigrants

The state should go after
employers who hire them, curb taxpayer-funded benefits, deploy the National Guard
to help the feds at the border and penalize 'sanctuary' cities.

“Illegal
immigration is another matter entirely. With the state budget in tatters,
millions of residents out of work and a state prison system strained by massive
overcrowding, California simply cannot continue to ignore the strain that
illegal immigration puts on our budget and economy. Illegal aliens cost
taxpayers in our state billions of dollars each year.As economist Philip J. Romero
concluded in a 2007 study, "illegal immigrants impose a 'tax' on legal
California residents in the tens of billions of dollars."

“Whites had the highest rate of
overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for
blacks and Latinos.”

Tom Cotton: ‘The Powerful and Elite Reap the Benefits of a Constant Influx of Low-Skill Labor’

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton responded toNew York Times columnist David Brooks over his claims that curbing mass immigration would cripple the U.S., tweeting that an influx of low-skilled labor hurts the employment prospects of young Americans, minorities, and established immigrants.

Cotton has sponsored a bill cutting annual immigration flows into the U.S. by half, by limiting entry to 500,000 foreign workers each years. It’s a popular position for a wide swath of voters: 54 percent want immigration halved or reduced to zero, including 22 percent who want a total moratorium. That includes 68 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats who want to see dramatic reductions in migration levels.

The foreign-born population is set to grow more than 700 percent from 1970s levels. Now, it stands at 42.4 million. Unless immigration controls are taken off autopilot, over 78 million foreigners will soon reside in the U.S.

Mass immigration from the Third World is crippling workers in the economy, as Breitbart News reported in July. Every single job created from 2000 to 2014 went to foreign-born workers residing in the U.S.

Waves of low-skilled workers allow natives to take up better jobs, Brooks says. Society stratified between low-skilled serfs and the wealthy benefits everyone: “The essential point is that immigrants don’t take native jobs on any sort of one-to-one basis. They drive economic activity all the way down the river, creating new jobs in some areas and then pushing native workers into more complicated jobs in others. A comprehensive study of non-European Union immigrants into Denmark between 1991 and 2008 found that immigrants did not push down wages, but rather freed natives to do more pleasant work.”

Americans have racked up over one trillion dollars in student loan debt looking to upgrade their skills and get back into the job market. And 41 percent of white, working-class men have given up looking for work in an era of high immigration rates and lowered wages, according to the Economist. That group comprises 23 percent of the U.S. workforce and much of President Donald Trump’s political base. Brooks incorrectly summarizes a National Academy of Sciences study, saying it “found that immigration didn’t drive down most wages, but it had a ‘very small’ and temporary effect on native-born workers without a high school degree.”

That’s not what the report said, Cotton chided Brooks, adding that his bill helps the “forgotten” classes hurt by mass immigration and globalization:

Brooks even takes a shot at those who are tro

ubled by the massive transformation immigration has brought to many American communities. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many Republicans prefer a dying white America to a place like, say, Houston,” he writes. People’s differences bring them together: “The large immigrant population has paradoxically given the city a very strong, very patriotic and cohesive culture, built around being welcoming to newcomers and embracing the future… In 2015 it had the healthiest philanthropic sector in the nation. The city is coming together to solve its pension problems better than just about any other big place.”

Brooks nurses a powerful dislike of Trump and his populist, America-First nationalism. In an earlier column, he called Trump’s election win “horrific”: “Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his assent.”

“After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think,” he warned darkly.

Along with Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue, Cotton introduced the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, or the RAISE Act, in Congress earlier in February. The bill would end the outdated chain migration system and allow migrants to only bring elderly parents along with them, provided they won’t go on public assistance.

“There has been a generation’s-long decline in blue collar wages,” Cotton said. “The natural effect of having low-skills and no-skills workers in this country is going to be a tighter labor market that is going to put more upward pressure on wages of working folks.”

“Our immigration system should focus on what is good for American citizens–and if parents and siblings or adult children or their spouses have the skills that they need to succeed in our economy and contribute, then they can come in through other employment-based programs,” he added.

While the declining job market in the United States may be
discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of illegal aliens continues
unabated, with many entering the United States as drug-smuggling “mules.”

From: AN AMERICAN CITIZEN OF LATIN/HISPANIC DESCENT WHOSE FIRST LANGUAGE IS SPANISH

Come on La Raza, time to tell the truth about illegals..............

Illegal’s pay American citizens to register their illegal cars for them.

They pay DMV employees under the table to get licenses and IDs without ever
having to take the written or driving test.

They buy auto insurance long enough to get their cars registered then drop it.

Some of them absolutely vote in our elections. They feel entitled after
being in the US illegally for so long.

They admittedly commit crimes including rape and murder and then simply exit
the country and re-enter with new fraudulent documents.

They are willing to work for minimum wage using stolen socials because they
claim the maximum number of dependents and no, they do not file taxes at year
end thus they are able to earn more than Americans in these very jobs who would
be fined/imprisoned for doing the same. Some owners of these companies will
call their places of business and warn these illegals when they receive IRS
mismatch letters on them because they are using stolen socials and ask them to
quit and reapply with a different one the following day.

They steal two socials, one to work under and the other to apply for
welfare, food stamps, Obamacare, etc.

Going to the doctor for basic care means an emergency room at a local
hospital and they all know that claiming chest pains and shortness of breath
gets them to the front of the line and they simply walk away without a second
thought to the bill. They move around to different hospitals, especially when
it comes to major medical care to avoid getting caught and it is the American
people who are left holding the bag.

They steal the birth certificates of babies and children who die at a very
young age and even live children who will not even realize their identities
have been stolen until much later in life.

Many from within the same immediate families take jobs for the sole purpose
of filing fraudulent workmen's comp claims which they later convert to lifetime
disability claims as a way of remaining in the country supported by the
taxpayers for life. It is what they call "easy money" and they teach
others to do the same.

We have fraud with regard to our own government employees who will sign
these illegals up for welfare, food stamps, etc. knowing full well that they
are illegal. They too can be bribed.

I could go on and on with the numerous ways in which they are stealing from
and defrauding the American people.

Fermin Rivera, 28, allegedly beat a puppy to death while
trying to break into a neighborhood home. During the attempted burglary, Rivera
had broken into the backyard but was met with barking by a small puppy. Surveillance
cameras show Rivera subsequently “cornered the Bichon-Maltese mix, lifted the
dog over his head and slammed it down with all his strength on the concrete
slab twice.” River is now reportedly “facing felony counts of animal cruelty
charges and attempted burglary charges.” Rivera is reportedly on an immigration
hold.

LEADING
MEMBERS OF THE LA RAZA DEMOCRAT PARTY:

2,000
CALIFORNIANS HAVE BEEN MURDERED BY MEXICANS..... WHO THEN FLED BACK OVER THE
OPE BORDER TO AVOID PROSECUTION

We don’t ask for financial contributions to support this POLITICALLY VERY

INCORRECT BLOG, but do appreciate you clicking on the ADSENSE ADS you find at the right and at the bottom of all posts which puts funds in our pockets to keep it going. Thanks for your support.

“Mexico in a country whose four wealthiest billionaires control as much wealth as the bottom half of the population—the 65 million that live in poverty (which includes 13 million living in extreme poverty)—and where the top 10 percent as a whole accounts for 67 percent of Mexico’s national wealth.”

"Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico was number six on the Forbes list with a net worth of $54.5 billion. Despite a $4.5 billion increase in his net worth from last year, Slim moved down the list from the number four position. All told the net worth of Mexico’s billionaires rose 17 percent in 2016 to $116.7 billion."

Wealth of world’s billionaires soars amid stock market surge

By Shannon Jones22 March 2017

The ranks of the world’s billionaires registered a sharp increase in 2016, with the number rising by 233 to reach a record 2,043, according to Forbes magazine’s annual survey. This was the first time that the Forbes list of the world’s richest has included more than 2,000 individuals.

The combined wealth of those on Forbes’ billionaires list rose 18 percent to $7.67 trillion, a staggering sum, more than the gross domestic product of all but the wealthiest of the world’s countries. The immediate impetus for the rise are surging stock prices, which have reached record levels since the election of US president Donald Trump, and the rising price of oil over the past 12 months.

More fundamentally, the increasing concentration of wealth among the world’s richest represents a social retrogression in which society’s resources are being plundered in the name of a mad pursuit of private gain.

The wealthiest individual in the world remains Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose fortune rose to $86 billion, an $11 billion increase. Second was investor Warren Buffet ($75.6 billion) and a close third Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($72.8 billion). Bezos recorded the single biggest jump in net worth last year, pocketing an additional $27.6 billion.

Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico was number six on the Forbes list with a net worth of $54.5 billion. Despite a $4.5 billion increase in his net worth from last year, Slim moved down the list from the number four position. All told the net worth of Mexico’s billionaires rose 17 percent in 2016 to $116.7 billion.

Combined, the top 10 billionaires on the Forbes list alone took in $558 billion, more than the Gross Domestic Product of Venezuela. Just eight of those billionaires control as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, 3.6 billion people, according to Oxfam.

The United States continues to have the largest number of billionaires in the world, with a record 565, an increase of 25 over last year. China is next with 319, while Germany is third with 114. China had the most newly minted billionaires last year, adding 76.

In impoverished India, where 13 Maruti Suzuki autoworkers were recently sentenced to life imprisonment on frame-up charges, there are 101 billionaires, making the country fourth on the list in terms of the super wealthy. At $23.3 billion, telecom tycoon Mukesh Ambani is India’s richest man, in a country where the average wage is just $295 per month.

There are 14 billionaires living in Sub-Saharan Africa, another region noted for its high proportion of people living in extreme poverty. The richest is Nigerian Aliko Dangote, ($12.1 billion) chairman of Dangote Cement, Africa’s largest cement producer.

US President Donald Trump is 544th on the list, with an estimated net worth of $3.4 billion, based largely on his holdings in the New York real estate market.

In the United States, meanwhile, the compensation of top executives also rose in 2016, up from its already obscene levels. The median compensation of chief executives at the 104 largest US companies rose 6.8 percent for 2016 to $11.5 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Twice as many CEOs saw pay increases as pay cuts, with most of the compensation coming in the form of stock awards.

Top-paid US CEO, Thomas Rutledge of Charter Communications, pocketed $98.5 million, a 42 percent increase. Estee Lauder CEO Fabrizio Freda raked in $48.4 million while Nike CEO Mark Parker nabbed $47.6 million. Caterpillar CEO Jim Umpleby got $18 million at a company that is being investigated by the federal government for a scheme involving tax fraud.

These figures provide a snapshot of the degree to which the world is being plundered by a financial elite that has amassed wealth on a scale that has no historical precedent. The growth of these fortunes parallels a process of social destruction in which the vast majority of the world’s population are being stripped of resources in order to provide money for tax subsidies to the rich and increases in military spending.

A large portion of the world subsists on less than $2 per day. Famine is threatening some 20 million people in Yemen as well as South Sudan, Somalia and northeast Nigeria, the product of predatory wars stoked by the United States.

In Western Europe the welfare state set up in the wake of World War II is being dismantled while Germany and other imperialist powers rearm in preparation for war.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the already inadequate social safety net is being further slashed to provide tax cuts for the rich and pay for a big increase in military spending. Life expectancy in the United States declined for the first time in 23 years in 2015 after decades of stagnant or declining income, cuts in health care services and other social programs and a burgeoning drug epidemic.

In the United States for the past four decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have seamlessly and without interruption proceeded with the dismantling of the social gains of the working class in order to enrich the financial aristocracy.

This process intensified with the election in 2008 of Barack Obama, whose administration made unlimited funds available to bail out Wall Street and, through its policies of quantitative easing, opened the spigots of the Federal Reserve to flood money into the stock market.

The policies of Obama paved the way for the election of the billionaire Trump, the direct representative of the criminal financial elite. Since the election, the stock market has reached record levels in anticipation of further tax handouts to the rich and the dismantling of health, safety and environmental regulations in the interests of boosting corporate profits.

There is a bipartisan consensus in the US Congress for an overhaul of the health-care system based on further restricting access and slashing costs so that more money can be made available for the military and tax cuts. Both Democrats and Republicans reject the notion that health care is a social right that should be made available to everyone free of charge, claiming, “there is no money.”

However, as the Forbes billionaire list demonstrates, there are resources aplenty for satisfying all pressing social needs. It is the present irrational organization of society and the subordination of all aspects of economic and social life under capitalism to the demands of a rapacious financial aristocracy that is the main stumbling block to providing for the well-being of the world’s population.

This raises the necessity for the working class to unite its forces globally for the socialist transformation of society. This means seizing the wealth of the corporate and financial elite and placing the major banks, petrochemical, industrial, transportation and health-care companies under the democratic ownership and control of the working class. These resources must be employed for the raising of the living standards of the world’s population and the provision of decent wages, healthcare, education and housing for all.

"Last year, Mexico amended its constitution to grant the president the authority to establish a state of emergency and declare martial law in instances that “place society in grave danger or conflict.""Mexico is now the region’s second largest importer of weapons, buying $7.9 billion in military equipment in 2015 alone.""Mexico in a country whose four wealthiest billionaires control as much wealth as the bottom half of the population—the 65 million that live in poverty (which includes 13 million living in extreme poverty)—and where the top 10 percent as a whole accounts for 67 percent of Mexico’s national wealth."Mexican government to vote on law expanding domestic military operations, authorizing mass spying

By Alex Gonzalez11 March 2017

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies is preparing to pass a law that provides the legal framework for the military to intervene in matters that “endanger stability, safety or public peace.” The proposed law would also grant the armed forces the authority to “make use of any method of data collection” and would force non-governmental institutions, as well as private entities, to hand over users’ private information. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies is expected to vote on the proposed law by April 20.

The Internal Security Law ( Ley de Seguridad Interior ), proposed in Congress last November, marks a milestone in the ruling class’s efforts to defend its rule against mass mobilization of the Mexican working class. Widely discredited and deeply unpopular, the Peña Nieto administration is taking steps to ensure that any future social unrest is met with police state measures.

Under the proposed law, the Mexican Army, Marines and Air Force can be formally deployed for wide-reaching operations that include fighting organized crime, investigating corruption, combatting terrorism and “restoring order” after national disasters. In addition, the armed forces will be permanently tasked with “internal security,” vaguely characterized as preventive actions “fundamental to anticipating the State’s actions against phenomena that seek to violate internal order.”

While the military has already been informally carrying out these operations without a legal framework under the guise of the decade-long “war on drugs,” the Internal Security Law aims to legalize and make permanent the use of the military in conducting anti-drug operations, a move that is sure to produce further human rights violations from a force already notorious for its acts of torture and abuse.

The Internal Security Law also lays the foundation for mass spying on the Mexican population. Telecommunications service providers will be forced to deliver “private communications, real-time geographical location or delivery of retained data on mobile communication equipment” without any form of judicial overview or accountability. According to the Digital Rights Defense Network, a Mexican privacy rights organization, the law’s broad language leaves open the possibility for the government to ask application and content providers to “establish vulnerabilities, deliver encryption keys or establish another type of back door to facilitate surveillance.”

The military, as stated in the proposed legislation, can be mobilized by the president at any time, as well as by Congressional actions. Last year, Mexico amended its constitution to grant the president the authority to establish a state of emergency and declare martial law in instances that “place society in grave danger or conflict.” As with the Constitutional amendment, the Internal Security Law is a carte blanche for the State to suspend civil rights and suspend basic democratic rights under the pretext of fighting organized crime and preventing terrorist attacks.

The law is being sponsored by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN). Both parties have been in power during and have played a role in escalating the bloody war on drugs, which has killed over 166,000 and disappeared 28,000 over the last decade.

The National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and the Party for Democratic Revolution (PRD), the nominal “left” Mexican bourgeois parties, have opposed the legislation from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. “The drafting of the law does not express clearly that the Mexican Army is the only one that can perform interior security functions,” stated PRD congressman Alejandro Ojelda. Similarly, Morena congressman Paulo César Martínez López has noted the proposed law “opens the door to military operations by foreign armies.” In other words, the PRD and Morena want to ensure that the Mexican state will have the exclusive power to crack down on social opposition from the working class using military force.

Human rights groups and academics have widely denounced the proposed law, warning its adoption would gravely endanger human rights in the country. Over the past decade, the armed forces have been repeatedly found guilty of torture, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances. The Mexican Federal Police and the armed forces have been implicated in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, while in Tlatlaya, 22 civilians were executed by the 102nd Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army.

The Interior Security Law is being proposed in the context of an outbreak of social opposition against the policies of the Trump administration and the inability of the Mexican government to provide any defense for workers, youth and peasants on either side of the border.

Since the election of Trump, the Mexican government has been in crisis over how to balance its role as a junior partner of American imperialism and subdue mounting social anger at home over Trump’s bullying threats to deport millions of immigrants to Mexico, renegotiate NAFTA, build a border wall with Mexico, halt remittances to the country and send US troops to Mexico to take over the war on drugs.

The law also comes in the wake of mass demonstrations against the policies of the Peña Nieto administration, including the gazolinazo protests at the beginning of the year, when thousands of workers mobilized across the country to block roads and highways, taking over processing and distribution centers, and shutting down transit services in many parts of the country.

In July of last year, teachers went on strike in Oaxaca against the regressive education policies of Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico” in defense of public education. After 13 were killed and dozens wounded when the Mexican federal police fired at striking teachers, 200,000 doctors and nurses struck in solidarity with the protesting teachers, and students at major universities boycotted classes to show their support.

In response, the Mexican ruling elite is building up the military to prepare for open class conflict. Mexico’s weapons imports have more than tripled in the last five years, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Mexico is now the region’s second largest importer of weapons, buying $7.9 billion in military equipment in 2015 alone.

Through the government’s military sales program, the Obama administration sold over $2.5 billion in military equipment to Mexico from 2008 to 2016. Weapons purchased directly from US companies—another way the Mexican government can acquire US weapons—tripled to $2 billion from 2011 to 2012.

Aude Felurant, an SIPRI analyst specializing in Latin American affairs, characterized the weaponry being brought into Mexico, including thousands of Humvees, dozens of Blackhawks, and millions of rounds of ammunition, as “the type of equipment that is imported to carry out counterinsurgency measures.”

Desperate to cling to its privileges and wealth, the Mexican ruling class will act quickly and violently to institute martial law and prevent social revolt from threatening its rule. In response, the working class must arm itself with revolutionary politics in a struggle for socialism and the unity of the international working class.

More significant still, a former Mexican official, Jorge Castañeda, threatened to unleash Mexican cartels onto the U.S. to retaliate for deportations of illegal immigrants and the construction of a border wall.

Mexican presidential candidate López Obrador campaigns on both sides of the border

By Don Knowland 7 March 2017

In the run-up to Mexico’s 2018 election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO), the head of the Movement of National Regeneration (Morena), has been on a speaking tour to prepare his presidential candidacy, appearing across Mexico and traveling to seven US cities. Having already spoken in Los Angeles and Chicago, he is appearing this week in El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona.

In 2006, AMLO was the candidate of the center-”left” Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which was itself a split-off from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico without interruption from 1929 to 2000. He lost the 2006 presidential election to Felipe Calderón of the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) due to widespread electoral fraud. AMLO, again as the PRD candidate, also claims that fraud cost him the 2012 presidential election, which saw the return to power of the PRI under President Enrique Peña Nieto after 12 years of PAN rule.

AMLO founded Morena as a political party in 2014 to serve as a vehicle for his personal candidacy and to disassociate himself from the PRD, which was discredited by its corruption and support for the “Pact for Mexico,” which led to a series of right-wing “reforms,” attacking public education and paving the way to privatization of Mexico’s state-run oil corporation, PEMEX.

Peña Nieto’s approval rating has sunk this year to as low as 12 percent. For months, AMLO has been leading in the polls for likely candidates in the 2018 presidential election. One poll in January had him at 45 percent, compared to candidates of the PAN (15-25 percent), PRI (a dismal 7-10 percent), and PRD (an abysmal 2-5 percent).

On his current tour, AMLO is asking Mexicans, regardless of their class position, to sign on to his “Political Agreement of Unity for the Prosperity of the People and the Renaissance of Mexico,” which consists of a handful of sentences filled with empty patriotic appeals and platitudes about a rebirth for Mexico.

AMLO and Morena call for uniting all sectors of society, “women and men, poor and rich, religious and free thinkers,” as long as they don’t participate in the corruption endemic to the Mexican ruling class, which he calls Mexico’s “main problem.”

Thus, billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, ranked as recently as 2013 as the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $55 billion or 6 percent of Mexico’s GDP, and who acquired Mexico’s national telephone company Telmex for a song, is welcome to participate in AMLO’s unity campaign. In Morena’s eyes, he is an “honest businessman,” rather than part of what AMLO calls the corrupt “mafia in power” who “traffic in influence.”

This in a country whose four wealthiest billionaires control as much wealth as the bottom half of the population—the 65 million that live in poverty (which includes 13 million living in extreme poverty)—and where the top 10 percent as a whole accounts for 67 percent of Mexico’s national wealth.

The threadbare nationalist program advanced by AMLO and Morena makes not even a pretense of challenging this grotesque social inequality and the capitalist property relations that are the source of the corruption that it condemns. Nor does it make any mention of imperialism—this despite the domination of the country and its economy for over a century by its northern neighbor, the United States.

Instead, Morena, in the more nationalistic pre-1980 tradition of the Mexican bourgeoisie, seeks better terms for Mexican business when dealing with US capital. AMLO stresses that the largest plants installed in Mexico belong to American investors or businessmen “who export merchandise and their profits to the United States and leave very few jobs or taxes” in Mexico.

Morena’s official program calls for “cooperative development” with US businesses and for “higher competition internally and competitiveness externally.”

With its invocation of universal civic, social and democratic values and vague moral appeals, AMLO and Morena orient themselves to Mexico’s middle class, which they claim has a “profound desire for liberation, to make justice a reality.” But much of the 9 percent under the top 1 percent in Mexico that constitutes Morena’s real social base, views the masses of workers and poor as a threat to their wealth and privileges. This layer includes the trade union operatives, academics and state bureaucrats.

Calling for a “moral and cultural revolution,” AMLO and Morena clearly oppose a social revolution and are determined to prevent Mexico’s working class from forging its political independence and fighting for power.

The so-called reforms currently put forward by AMLO are at best flaccid, and in many cases reactionary.

AMLO’s current flagship proposal is to “guarantee the right to education” (a right already enshrined in the Mexican constitution) by paying 300,000 youth a paltry $120-a-month scholarship to study. At the same time, AMLO proposes to guarantee an additional 2.3 million young people a $225-a-month salary for job training. AMLO absurdly claims that this will guarantee full employment for young people and remove the temptation of “antisocial behavior,” that is entering the drug trade.

The second proposal AMLO is highlighting is to establish a 12-mile-deep “free or open zone” along the 1,800-mile border with the United States, which would include all of Mexico’s border cities with the US, such as Tijuana and Juarez, in order to “promote growth” in this this region of Mexico. Under this proposal, “incentives will be given, taxes will be lowered, gasoline prices will be lowered and job creation will be encouraged.” The 11 percent-16 percent value-added tax previously imposed in the border area would be repealed.

More generally, while Morena’s program calls on the state to “promote the national economy,” AMLO insists that Mexican development is to be accomplished without increasing taxes on the wealthy, by freeing up funds lost to corruption and by the government “acting with austerity”—that is, not spending significantly on social programs or infrastructure. The country, AMLO says “should no longer be indebted.”

This is a right-wing program. Mexican economic development will continue on as it has under the counter-reforms implemented through Peña Nieto’s 2013 “Pact for Mexico,” which is grounded on increasing exploitation of Mexican workers and poor peasants by the Mexican ruling class.

Last year, AMLO sold out the struggles of teachers in poor southern Mexico states who were opposing education “reform,” that is attacks on their wages and rights, pushing them to sit down with intransigent federal officials who were heading up these attacks.

When masses of Mexicans protested a 20 percent hike in gas prices in January, AMLO attacked some who blocked refinery facilities or looted stores for employing “fascist strategies.” Order, he said, had to be brought to such “chaos.” Any and all violence had to be avoided in order to assure a “peaceful and democratic” road to change, despite the ever-increasing violence of the Mexican state and its military and police agencies against the population.

In the speech he gave in Los Angeles last month, AMLO attempted to reason with Trump against the latter’s threats to impose vindictive tariffs on Mexico exports to the United States, rewrite the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in favor of the US and deport millions of Mexicans to Mexico.

In response to Trump’s attempts to whip up anti-immigrant chauvinism, AMLO called on “American academicians and intellectuals who hold civic, social and democratic values” to draw up a plan to “convince and persuade workers and the middle class in the United States that migrants are not their enemies.” He said that Morena would work with such academicians and social leaders to create committees in the US to spread “the message of reason and fellowship among the U.S. population.”

AMLO’s ideology, which, like Trump’s, proceeds from nationalist and patriotic appeals, can offer no solution whatsoever to the very real problems he raises. Workers in both countries must reject the nationalism and fake “left” populism of AMLO and Morena.

At AMLO’s speech in Los Angeles, the WSWS interviewed Juan Rivera, a retired Mexican worker who came to the US in 1968 to work in the fields. After hearing AMLO speak, Rivera put forward an entirely different perspective. He said that the “unity of Mexican and American workers presented the way forward; that the day is not far off when the working classes of both those countries will make capitalism collapse and fall.”

Rather than making appeals to academics and social leaders, that is, to layers who are invariably tied to the Democratic Party, what is needed is for Mexican and US workers, who are already united in terms of production chains, to unite through an independent political struggle on a program against capitalism and for socialism.

THE MEXICAN INVASION AND THE DEATH of WHITE AMERICA

“Whites had the highest rate of
overdose deaths of any ethnicity, more than double the combined death rate for
blacks and Latinos.”

While the declining job market in the United States may be
discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of illegal aliens continues
unabated, with many entering the United States as drug-smuggling “mules.”

"Peña Nieto finds himself caught between the overwhelming popular hostility toward both Trump and his own government (his approval ratings have dipped below 12 percent), and the desire of the Mexican capitalist ruling elite that he represents to continue to secure its profit interests as a junior partner of US imperialism."

Amid Mexico
talks, Trump calls deportations a “military operation”

By Bill Van Auken
24 February 2017

Two days after rolling out a draconian immigration policy that
threatens the deportation of millions of undocumented workers and their
families, President Donald Trump described the unfolding crackdown as “a
military operation.”

Speaking to a White House gathering Thursday of top corporate
bosses, including the CEOs of Dow Chemical, General Electric, Lockheed Martin
and Caterpillar Inc., Trump hailed the escalation of repression on the
US-Mexican border along with the recent series of Immigration Control and
Enforcement (ICE) raids that resulted in the roundup of several hundred
immigrants from coast to coast.

“We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate
that nobody has ever seen before,” said Trump, adding, “And it’s a military
operation because what has been allowed to come into our country—when you see
gang violence that you’ve read about like never before and all of the
things—much of that is people that are here illegally. And they’re rough and
they’re tough, but they’re not tough like our people. So we’re getting them
out.”

Asked to clarify Trump’s remark, White House spokesman Sean Spicer
argued that the president was using the word “military” as an “adjective,”
meant to convey that the ICE raids were “happening with precision.”

Trump’s bullying and bellicose remarks coincided with a public
appearance by his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security
Secretary Gen. John Kelly in Mexico City alongside their Mexican counterparts
in what was billed as an attempt to strengthen relations between the two
countries following a series of blatant provocations over Trump’s proposed
border wall, attacks on immigrants, threats to impose tariffs and suggestion
that US troops could be sent into Mexico to wage the so-called drug war.

Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto was forced to call off a
scheduled state visit to Washington last month over Trump’s crude insistence
that Mexico pay for his proposed wall.

Speaking before the Mexican media, Gen. Kelly, the former
commander of US Southern Command, which oversees all US military operations in
Latin America and the Caribbean, pledged, “There will be no use of military
forces in immigration,” Kelly said. “There will be no—repeat, no—mass
deportations.”

This assurance follows the leaking last week of a Department of
Homeland Security memo calling for the mobilization of 100,000 National Guard
troops to hunt down and detain immigrant workers. While disavowed by the White
House, it is clear that a martial law crackdown was under discussion within the
US administration.

Kelly’s statement on Thursday, which appeared to be directly
contradicted by Trump’s boasting about the immigration crackdown to the US
corporation heads, followed his attempt to walk back part of the language
contained in two Department of Homeland Security memorandums laying out the
Trump administration’s reactionary and repressive immigration enforcement
policy.

A provision that touched off heated protests from Mexican
officials calls for Border Patrol and ICE agents, to deal with detained
immigrants who are not deemed a threat of “subsequent illegal entry” by
“returning them to the foreign contiguous territory from which they arrived,”
to await the decision of immigration courts on their removal proceedings. The
provision calls for these immigrants to appear before the court via “video
teleconference.”

The memo argued that this procedure would save US detention
facilities for other undocumented workers caught in the planned immigration
dragnet.

As most of the immigrants detained at the border are not
Mexicans—220,000 out of 400,000 in the fiscal year that ended on September
30—with the largest number consisting of refugees fleeing violence and
oppression in Central America, the provision essentially calls for dumping
citizens of third countries into Mexico to solve an alleged problem in the US.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray rejected the
new US policy. “The government and the people of Mexico will not accept the new
immigration policies of the United States,” he said, vowing that Mexico would
go to the United Nations to charge Washington with human rights violations
against immigrants.

Videgaray is among the more right-wing figures in the Peña Nieto
government, a former investment banker with ties to Trump advisors. He was
forced to resign from an earlier post because of public outrage over his
arranging a visit to Mexico by then-presidential candidate Trump that had all
the trappings of a state visit. Now, however, he has been compelled to denounce
the Trump administration for attempting to impose a “unilateral” policy on
Mexico.

He threatened that if the US went ahead with trying to send
non-Mexican immigrants back across the Mexican border, Mexico would not accept
them and would demand that Washington provide proof of Mexican citizenship for
anyone it seeks to deport to the country. Such a policy could lead to a
roadblock in front of mass deportations and force the US government to
indefinitely detain huge numbers of arrested immigrants.

Others have suggested that Mexico could retaliate against
Washington’s aggressive policies by halting its own repressive crackdown on
Central American immigrants trying to cross Mexico’s southern border en route
to the US. Last year, Mexico sent nearly twice as many Central American
migrants back to their countries as the US did, doing Washington’s dirty work.

Tensions over the new immigration policy were such that Mexican
government officials warned that a planned meeting between the two US
secretaries and President Peña Nieto would not take place unless significant
agreements were reached beforehand.

In the end, however, Tillerson and Kelly met for an hour with Peña
Nieto at the Los Pinos presidential palace in Mexico City, arriving and leaving
in a heavily-guarded armored convoy.

Mexico’s official news agency Notimex reported that the Mexican
president told the US officials that Mexico “will always negotiate in a
comprehensive manner with a firm position and in favor of the country’s
interests.” He also reportedly stated that protecting the interests of Mexicans
residing in the US was a priority for his government.

At the same time, he called for the “strengthening of dialogue”
and said the presence of the two US cabinet members was an indication of the
Trump administration’s interest “in building a positive relation that results
in better conditions of security, development and prosperity for both
countries.”

Neither side gave any indication that agreements had been reached
on any of the issues that have brought US-Mexican relations to one of their
lowest points since the Mexican-American war 170 years ago.

Peña Nieto finds himself caught between the overwhelming popular
hostility toward both Trump and his own government (his approval ratings have
dipped below 12 percent), and the desire of the Mexican capitalist ruling elite
that he represents to continue to secure its profit interests as a junior
partner of US imperialism.

At the same time, the ruling PRI (Institutional Revolutionary
Party) faces the prospect of defeat in the 2018 elections at the hands of the
Morena (Movement for National Regeneration) of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a
veteran bourgeois politician who is leading the polls on the basis of a vaguely
left nationalist appeal, accusing Peña Nieto of corruption and failing to stand
up to Trump.

Peña Nieto and the Mexican bourgeoisie as a whole are no more
concerned about Mexican immigrant workers facing a reign of fear and terror in
the US than they are about the plight of masses of impoverished workers in
Mexico itself. Their main aim is to prevent the return of millions of jobless
deportees, along with the cutting off of remittances and a sharp escalation of
already-explosive social upheavals in Mexico itself.

Disquiet within American ruling circles
over Trump’s new policies found expression Thursday in an editorial published
in theWall Street
Journal, which warned that the new immigration crackdown is “so
sweeping that it could capture law-abiding immigrants whose only crime is using
false documents to work. This policy may respond to the politics of the moment,
but chasing down maids and meatpackers will not go down as America’s finest
hour.”

The editorial went on to question the
spending of tens of billions of dollars on Trump’s proposed border wall, along
with the hiring of 15,000 more ICE and Border Patrol agents, together with a
massive expansion of detention facilities. At the same time, theJournalexpressed fears that a “labor
shortage” and the lack of any mechanism to import low-wage immigrants could
adversely affect profit interests.

Trump’s anti-immigrant demagogy and the savagely repressive
policies he has introduced are aimed at scapegoating immigrants for the
conditions created by capitalism in order to weaken and divide the working
class. These attacks can be countered only on the basis of the fight to unify
immigrant and US-born workers in a fight to block the deportations and to unite
workers on both sides of the border in a common struggle against the capitalist
system.

In California, illegals can vote: it’s possible and very likely. California’s automatic motor-voter law all but assures that illegals seeking driver’s licenses will get a ballot along with their license. Miscreants from any corner of the world can register to vote in California online, too. No vetting, no assurance, no integrity. I don’t care how loudly the SJWs and the loony left-wing donors scream about Hillary’s popular vote victory. Voter fraud in broken inner city hellholes like Detroit and New York City cannot compare with the ballot stuffing throughout the once Golden State.

Besides, four million of us Californians supported Donald Trump, and don’t regret it! And we were honest about it!

“This nation no longer is a democratic republic...rather it has become a tool of the super-rich members of the above mentioned elite who preselect our presidents based on their cooperation and complicity with the elite’s ultimate goals. Obama has, in their opinion done superbly carrying out the plans well laid out for him by his backers.”

As economist Philip J. Romero concluded in a 2007 study, "illegal immigrants impose a 'tax' on legal California residents in the tens of billions of dollars."

Californiamust stem the flow of illegal immigrants

The state should go after employers who hire them, curb taxpayer-funded benefits, deploy the National Guard to help the feds at the border and penalize 'sanctuary' cities.

“Illegal immigration is another matter entirely. With the state budget in tatters, millions of residents out of work and a state prison system strained by massive overcrowding, California simply cannot continue to ignore the strain that illegal immigration puts on our budget and economy. Illegal aliens cost taxpayers in our state billions of dollars each year.As economist Philip J. Romero concluded in a 2007 study, "illegal immigrants impose a 'tax' on legal California residents in the tens of billions of dollars."

“The California-Mexico border would surely be opened wide, prompting a spike in unfettered immigration by desperately poor people, drug dealers, and gang members to what is already a virtually lawless and out-of-control welfare state.”

Lou Dobbs Tonight

In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third‑nation neutral arbitration of disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.

California State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Léon (D-Los Angeles) said last Tuesday that “half his family” was in the country illegally, using false documents, and eligible for deportation under President Trump’s newexecutive orderagainst “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

"The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot." --- EXCELSIOR --- national newspaper of Mexico

"Republicans should call for lower immigration to stop the Democrat voter recruitment. But more importantly, all Americans should call for lower immigration in order to offer a better opportunity of finding jobs for those millions of their fellow Americans of all political persuasions who would like to work."

This week’s appellate court ruling provides a jolt of reality that the media has chosen to ignore. Election fraud was a significant concern in 2008 and 2010, which is why Judicial Watch launched an election integrity project in 2012. The project is a legal campaign to force cleanup of voter registration rolls as well as monitor elections. As an example of the pervasive fraud, Judicial Watch uncovered that 1,046 aliens, or residents who are not U.S. citizens, were on the voter rolls in eight Virginia counites leading up to the 2016 presidential election. If that rate of non-citizen registration held in the rest of Virginia’s counties, that would mean that about 6,500 non-citizens are registered to vote in the state. Additionally, Judicial Watch’s investigation found that 57,923 Virginians were registered to vote in at least one other state as well as 19 deceased individuals. Similar issues have been uncovered in several other states as part of Judicial Watch’s ongoing probe into election fraud.

The Latin American woman in the recent court ruling who voted illegally is hardly an isolated case. Her name is Margarita Del Pilar Fitzpatrick and she lied about being an American citizen on an Illinois Department of Motor Vehicle form. It was that easy. Fitzpatrick, a legal U.S. resident with three kids, voted in two federal elections in 2006 and claims that she had official approval to cast a ballot after presenting her Peruvian passport and green card. An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals, the government’s highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws, determined that Fitzpatrick should be deported because non-U.S. citizens cannot vote in federal elections and can be removed from the country for doing so.

Mexico had a major role in fostering guerrilla groups in Central America during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, backing off only when it became a hindrance to the NAFTA deal with the United States, and when some of the groups began operating in Mexico. Mexico is feared and resented throughout Central America as a bully and for its mistreatment of Central American migrants. The horror stories these migrants tell of their passage through Mexico are hair-raising and heartbreaking.

I wrote during the recent hysteria over Russian hacking and interference in our 2016 elections that,

Is there foreign interference in our elections? You bet.

The biggest offender? Not Russia, but Mexico. Mexican officials publicly called on Mexicans in the US to oppose Trump; Mexico’s over fifty–yes, fifty–consulates in the US (here) are hot beds of political activity and activism. Millions of illegal and legal aliens largely from Mexico and Central America vote, yes vote. We need to have an in-depth investigation into Mexico’s interference in our elections, an interference that goes well beyond revealing embarrassing DNC texts.

Chicago Sheriff Openly Defies Federal Immigration Order

The same day that DHSissued its new guidelinesregarding Immigration law enforcement, Tom Dart, the Sheriff of Cook County, IL; home of the City of Chicago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the nation’s first Mayoral Sanctuary Policy, stated he has “no interest” in joining federal immigration efforts. As if county sheriffs across the nation can pick and choose which federal laws they will, and will not, follow.

This isnothing new for Chicago, home of the first official mayor-issued sanctuary policy. Since 1985 Chicago has openly defied federal Immigration law; an interesting trend since no other area of federal law is defied as aggressively as immigration. Cara Smith, the policy chief for Sheriff Tom Dart, stated “We have not been approached nor would we be interested in participating in this program.” Then added, “Our focus is and will remain on addressing violence in the city.” Smith’s statements were reported by the ChicagoTribune. This comment would be

The city of Chicago is entirely contained within Cook County. The county has authored some of the nation’s most outrageously illegal anti-immigration law policies. On September 30, 2003, the Cook County Commission’s Committee on Finance, led by Chairman Bill Daley (a brother of Mayor Daley) pass an ordinance declaring the Mexican “matricula consular” card a valid form of ID in Cook County. Then on March 15, 2006, Cook County Commissioner Roberto Maldonado introduced a resolution, which passed, resolving to fight HR 4437, a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate declaring illegal immigration a felony. Then onSept. 7, 2006Maldonado sponsored another resolution declaring Cook County a “sanctuary county” for immigrants. Conveniently leaving out the word “illegal.” before immigrants. Then onApril 30, 2007Maldonado sponsored a resolution to declare Cook County a “Fair and Equal County for Immigrants.”

“Fair and Equal County for Immigrants.”

BLOG: BUT LEGALS STILL GET THE TAX BILLS FOR THEIR WELFARE AND CRIME WAVE!

Bill Daley was Chairman of the Cook County Financial committee when they announced in 2004 that they would defy Federal law.

President Obama joined the rebellion against federal law when he sued Arizona over its state law,SB 1070, in 2012. TheChicago Public School systemhas also joined the movement to flout federal law: it issued memos to school principals not to allow immigration officials in schools without a warrant. It’s not surprising that given this defiance by its law enforcement and public school system, Hispanics in the city feel that they are above the law. Clearly, the battle lines have been drawn, and Chicago is the first big city to flout president Trump’s new effort to enforce existing immigration law, just as its mayor was the first to declare Chicago a sanctuary city.

The Democrat Party of the U.S. hasa long historyof manipulating “persons of color” going back two hundred years to the days of John Calhoun. In the 1820s, southern white slave owners began to rebel against the movement to abolish slavery, and warned that they would not respect the laws of new states which declared that slaves who traveled there would be free. This hostility toward the human rights of African Americans ultimately led to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, but defiant Democrats refused to acknowledge equality for persons of color and fought their right to vote.

The newest group of “persons of color” is the Hispanic group. Before 1970 Hispanic numbers in the U.S. were so low that the 1970 Census did not even list “Hispanic” as an ethnic category. In 1979 Los Angeles began the movement to encourage the settlement of illegal immigrants to the city, and in 1985 Chicago became the first big cityto openly proclaim, through Executive Order 85-1 issued by its Mayor Harold Washington, that residents of the city

would be given city services and

employment opportunities regardless of

citizenship status.

Of course, the power “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization” is given by the Constitution only to Congress, not to Chicago or Cook County. But in the tradition of the manipulation of minorities Chicago and other big cities started up what I have called “Racism Version 2.0” by establishing themselves as sanctuary cities for Hispanic residents.

Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and other cities have absolutely no legal authority with regard to immigration law, yet they have all flouted Federal law and sought to carve out illegal immigrants as a group over which they have absolute control. And they have placed them in highly segregated neighborhoods, just as they have herded blacks into highly segregated areas, and with the promises

of benefits to single mothers, low income

housing, and food stamps, confining them to

lives of poverty and desperation ever since

the early 1930s.

This defiance was to be expected. Chicago has spawned defiance of federal immigration law for forty years. It will be interesting to see how President Trump reacts to this. Cook County’s Sheriff Dart has definitely drawn a line in the sand, and dared Trump to do anything about it. Should Trump refuse to act and allow Chicago to defy the rule of Federal law, then other sanctuary cities will follow.

Why Chicago promotes illegal immigration and shields immigrants from federal law enforcement is not difficult to understand. It’s all about political power and money. In the 1982 gubernatorial election an FBI investigation found that over 80,000 illegal aliensillegally voted. And today each person in the state of Illinois brings in $4,000 worth of Federal block grant money. This, in addition to the DACA money, public housing, WIC food stamp program, school lunch, ESL (English as a second language) and dozens of other programs. Illinois, Cook County and the city of Chicago are now all heavily dependent on the Hispanic illegal immigrant population as a source of local, state and federal benefit dollars. It’s not just Hispanics who are illegal but other nationalities as well: Chicago has a large recently arrived Polish immigrant population as well as those from southeastern Europe who came as refugees after the Bosnian war.

The CPS system is heavily dependent upon federal dollars for its operating expenses. Nevertheless, the CPS memo to principals clearly stated its position: “To be very clear, CPSdoes not provideassistance to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the enforcement of federal civil immigration law.”

The Chicago Public School system has no legal authority to enforce, or deny enforcement, of Federal immigration law. Not since the Little Rock, Arkansas school system defied segregation orders in the 1950s have public schools open defied federal government law enforcement directives.

If Cook County Sheriff Dart can refuse to cooperate with federal law, why doesn’t he refuse to evict people from their homes, after their home is sold for nonpayment of property taxes? Wouldn’t that help those in need?

Among other issues, this proves that government, not big business, is behind the illegal immigration movement. Government, not big business, is openly defying Federal law enforcement DHS policy in Cook County, Illinois.

“Over the last decade, theMexican ruling class has
carried out a ruthless drive to intensify the exploitation of its labor and
natural resources, mainly by American banks and corporations.”….sounds like what Wall Street has done to us!

Protests in Mexico continue against gas price hike, water privatization

By Clodomiro Puentes

31 January 2017

The gasolinazo protests, which erupted in Mexico early this month over the slashing of gasoline subsidies, continue throughout the country. In Baja California, these protests have coincided with enormous social anger over PAN (National Action Party) state Governor Francisco Vega’s attempt to ram through legislation that would privatize water services and implement severe rate increases, a measure backed by the ostensibly “center-left” PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens’ Movement).

On January 22, protests were coordinated across the country. In Tijuana, some 18,000 protesters gathered at the city’s Monumento a Cuauhtémoc roundabout in one of the main arteries of the downtown district and marched to the town hall. In Mexicali’s town hall, over 20,000 protesters convened. At these protests, the calls for the resignation of Governor Vega were added to the national calls for the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

The immense anger set off by the efforts to subordinate to private profit such a basic social right as access to water, forced Vega to repeal the measure earlier this month. The most extreme proposed rate hikes were in Tijuana, where the minimum rate of 59.1 pesos per cubic meter would have been raised to 99.5 pesos, and in Playas de Rosarito, from 81.2 to 99 pesos. In addition, the bill would have allowed private water concerns to cut off service for non-payment after 90 days, a measure which is deemed unconstitutional. Even at present prices, urban residential rates in Tijuana currently exceed those for similar services across the border in San Diego.

In spite of the repeal, the protests against the state government continue, alongside the ongoing protests throughout a country beset by inflation and a chronically underperforming economy, whose future looks increasingly uncertain with the election of Donald Trump.

Since coming to power, Trump has demanded that Mexico pay $12 to $15 billion for a border wall and has threatened trade war through the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Mexican peso has lost approximately 13 percent of its value in relation to the dollar, while the cost of gasoline is expected to rise by 14 to 20 percent in the next year, driving up prices of all commodities and further straining the ability of working families to pay for basic necessities. Mexican President Peña Nieto’s politically-calculated cancellation of a planned meeting with Trump will do nothing to resolve the Mexican government’s state of crisis, with the president’s approval rating hanging precariously just above the single digits.

Members of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality intervened at continuing protests this past Sunday to speak with those attending about social and political conditions in Mexico, the significance of a Trump presidency and the need for a socialist program which insists on the international unity of the working class.

Protesters chanted “Fuera Peña,fuera Kiko!” (“Out with Peña, out with Kiko!”—the latter referring to the Baja California state governor) and carried signs expressing their outrage over not only the gasolinazo and the attempt at water privatization, but a range of long-standing grievances, including the counter-reforms aimed at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the disappearances of many individuals in the state and of the 43 students who were kidnapped by the government in Iguala in 2014.

About 400 people attended the protest. A truck equipped with speakers and a microphone led the march through the city as angry citizens denounced the government. Professor Juan Ramirez, a member of the “non-party” political organization Ciudadanos Unidos de Tijuana, which has played a role in organizing the demonstrations over the past month, was the main speaker during the march. His remarks consisted mostly of the narrowest of demands to the municipal government.

That the protest’s final destination was an empty city hall seemed to symbolize the ruling elite’s indifference to the needs and aspirations of the masses of working people, and the dead-end protest perspective of the Ciudadanos Unidos de Tijuana leadership. Among those who joined in the demonstration, however, many were looking for a way to fight the government and the deteriorating social conditions in Mexico.

“I’m very pleased that people are protesting, it’s good to see Mexicans waking up,” said Lorena. “This protest shows that we won’t stand for privatizing water or paying 18 pesos more for a liter of gasoline.

“I don’t feel that working people are represented. They’re all equally dishonest—neither PRI, nor PAN, nor PRD; they’re all the same, corrupt, enriching themselves off of the people, and never following through with what they promise. I’ve voted for the PRI for 25 years, but with everything that’s going on, I’ve had it.”

While expressing hopes that a party like Morena (the National Regeneration Party headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador-AMLO) might offer some sort of alternative, she noted that figures such as AMLO were cut from the same cloth as the rest of the political establishment. “It’s true, even the ones claiming to be outsiders are all from the same group as the rest. They haven’t been in power yet, so we’ll have to see how it plays out.”

“It’s important that we’re here to defend the Constitution, which the water law would’ve gone against. We need a solution to the political parties that we have now, which only exist to benefit wealthy classes,” said Miguel, one of the protesters. “I wish that the media would cover these protests more extensively, and tell the truth about them. Too often, they attempt to portray us as just rabble rousers with nothing to do. That’s obviously not true, we’re here peacefully.”

Alicia, a domestic worker, said, “There could be a danger that this gets derailed. What we have now is a government that only represents the wealthy, the millionaires. It makes no sense that we have one of the richest people in the world, Carlos Slim, and yet we have a minimum wage of 80 pesos a day. That doesn’t cover anything, and the price of just about everything keeps increasing.”

Members of the Socialist Equality Party were able to address the assembled crowd, emphasizing the international dimension of the struggle facing workers, and the consequent need to unite Mexican and US workers across the border that divides them.

“We have to unite [internationally], and we have to be very conscious of which Mexico we’re talking about—the Mexico of workers. Long live the international working class!” said one SEP speaker. These remarks were met with shouts of “Viva!” and applause, with many in the crowd asking for leaflets and information.

The protests express a growing popular awareness that the whole of the Mexican political establishment is fundamentally hostile to the needs of the masses of working people. What is lacking, however, is a conscious revolutionary leadership in the working class, raising the danger that the protests will dissipate mounting anger behind one or another wing of the bourgeois political establishment. What is urgently required is the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Mexico to link the struggles of working people across North America on the basis of a program of international socialism.

Video: Cartel Gun Battle Rages in Mexican Border City

RIO BRAVO, Tamaulipas — Machine gunfire and rolling battles along the main avenues of this city spread terror among townspeople who tried to hide inside homes and businesses. Stray bullets went through the walls of some houses.

The violence took place on Friday morning when Mexican soldiers and cartel gunmen clashed along the streets of this city. Rio Bravo is immediately south of Donna, Texas, and has an international bridge connecting both cities.

A citizen journalist recorded the moment when a convoy of soldiers blocked a street and began to engage a group of gunmen.

While neither the federal or the state governments have released any official information about the event, unofficial sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that at least three cartel gunmen died in the battle.

Military personnel were deployed throughout the main avenues of this city. For more than an hour, local residents took to social media to keep each other informed about the areas where the shooting was taking place. Primary flashpoints were in the Graciano Sanchez neighborhood and the Rural Road 15, which leads to the border city of Reynosa.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Reynosa, Tamaulipas and “J.A. Espinoza” from Matamoros Tamaulipas.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila — Two agents from a special police unit known as Fuerza Coahuila have been arrested for the alleged kidnapping and extortion of a family of Central American migrants who were trying to get to Texas.

The police officers are accused of kidnapping and extorting the family by making promises of crossing them to Texas after a ransom was paid off. The agents had locked up the family at a stash house in this border city.

Sources within the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office (PGJE) confirmed to Breitbart Texas that this week that members of the PGJE Investigative Police Unit carried out a raid at the stash house where the Fuerza Coahuila members had allegedly been holding the family. The operation was kicked off after a Central American woman contacted authorities about the kidnapping of her family, The PGJE investigators arrested the two Fuerza Coahuila officers at the stash house.

The border city of Piedras Negras is used by drug cartels and human smuggling groups as a stepping point for entering Texas. The lack of border security in the area has allowed groups like Los Zetas — now called Cartel Del Noreste, to move ton quantities of cocaine and thousands of illegal immigrants with minimal difficulties.

The two police officers from Fuerza Coahuila whose names have not been publicly revealed were taken to the Piedras Negras state prison. Breitbart Texas was able to obtain an exclusive leaked photograph of one of the alleged kidnappers.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.M. Martinez” from Piedras Negras, Coahuila and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz.

After decades of being a good neighbor and spending more than half a billion dollars to
build Tijuana's sewage treatment plants, Mexico has repaid the favor by
intentionally unleashing 143 million gallons of stench-filled sewage
onto San Diego's beaches over 17 days in February. It's the biggest spill
in two decades, the San Diego Union Tribune reported. San Diego officials
say it was done without warning, was deliberately done, and still has garnered no
response from Mexican officials who won't even take U.S. phone calls.

Supposedly, the idea was to save millions in pumping costs by
shipping it to the gringos up north. But it makes one wonder if it might
just be sewage warfare, given Mexico's fury at President Trump's proposed
border wall and Tijuana's bizarre silence. The mayor of nearby Imperial
Beach calls it "the tsunami of sewage spills." KGTV reported
that a binational investigation was announced Thursday.

It might just be window dressing.

The act came just days after Mexican president Enrique Peña-Nieto
canceled a Jan. 31 visit to the U.S., reportedly after an unfriendly telephone conversation with
President Trump. The White House has denied it, but supposedly, Trump
threatened to send in troops if the Mexicans could not get rid of its drug
trafficking "bad hombres," the AP reported. More
significant still, a former Mexican official, Jorge Castañeda, threatened
to unleash Mexican cartels onto the U.S. to
retaliate for deportations of illegal immigrants and the construction of a
border wall. Castañeda is not a standing official and does not belong to
the same PRI that is now the ruling party of Mexico, but he's very influential
in Mexican power circles and no doubt knows the local sentiment at a minimum.
He also could be "plausible deniability" for the Mexican
government as he issues the threat, while getting Mexico's message across.
"Clearly, they will play dirty," wrote ZeroHedge's Tyler
Durden.

It's significant, because this is a country that knows how to play
poor man's warfare. Instead of unleashing nukes or hacking onto a hated
rival, the Mexicans have always specialized in unleashing their least desirable
people onto the U.S., like a pressure valve, either in accordance with their
own domestic needs or as a stick to punish the U.S. with. Mexican
officials have admitted as much in the past. The threat of releasing
illegals has always been a tool for them.

With those threats, and the sudden emergence of sewage warfare –
and Mexican officials refusing to take U.S. officials' phone calls – it appears
they may be expanding their range of poor man's weapons.

It's tempting to snicker: so much for Tijuana officials' efforts
to paint their city as a modern and responsible one, a haven for progress, as
it now claims. It may look fairly modern, but its government is still the
same old donkey show it's always been, this time with different donkeys, or
asses, as the case may be. But Tijuana is no longer the ridiculous border
town of lore. It is now one of Mexico's largest cities with more than a
million people, and a city larger than San Diego. It would have influence
among the solons of Mexico City as a power center.

The investigation should go forward, but if it hits a dead end
with no one taking responsibility, it will be pretty obvious that the sewage
problem extends to Mexico's highest levels of power. If that is the case,
sanctions of some kind are in order. Mexican officials cannot be permitted
to fling poo at the U.S. from their enclosure like the frustrated apes of the
San Diego Zoo.

Mexican government to vote on law expanding domestic military operations, authorizing mass spying

By Alex Gonzalez11 March 2017

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies is preparing to pass a law that provides the legal framework for the military to intervene in matters that “endanger stability, safety or public peace.” The proposed law would also grant the armed forces the authority to “make use of any method of data collection” and would force non-governmental institutions, as well as private entities, to hand over users’ private information. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies is expected to vote on the proposed law by April 20.

The Internal Security Law ( Ley de Seguridad Interior ), proposed in Congress last November, marks a milestone in the ruling class’s efforts to defend its rule against mass mobilization of the Mexican working class. Widely discredited and deeply unpopular, the Peña Nieto administration is taking steps to ensure that any future social unrest is met with police state measures.

Under the proposed law, the Mexican Army, Marines and Air Force can be formally deployed for wide-reaching operations that include fighting organized crime, investigating corruption, combatting terrorism and “restoring order” after national disasters. In addition, the armed forces will be permanently tasked with “internal security,” vaguely characterized as preventive actions “fundamental to anticipating the State’s actions against phenomena that seek to violate internal order.”

While the military has already been informally carrying out these operations without a legal framework under the guise of the decade-long “war on drugs,” the Internal Security Law aims to legalize and make permanent the use of the military in conducting anti-drug operations, a move that is sure to produce further human rights violations from a force already notorious for its acts of torture and abuse.

The Internal Security Law also lays the foundation for mass spying on the Mexican population. Telecommunications service providers will be forced to deliver “private communications, real-time geographical location or delivery of retained data on mobile communication equipment” without any form of judicial overview or accountability. According to the Digital Rights Defense Network, a Mexican privacy rights organization, the law’s broad language leaves open the possibility for the government to ask application and content providers to “establish vulnerabilities, deliver encryption keys or establish another type of back door to facilitate surveillance.”

The military, as stated in the proposed legislation, can be mobilized by the president at any time, as well as by Congressional actions. Last year, Mexico amended its constitution to grant the president the authority to establish a state of emergency and declare martial law in instances that “place society in grave danger or conflict.” As with the Constitutional amendment, the Internal Security Law is a carte blanche for the State to suspend civil rights and suspend basic democratic rights under the pretext of fighting organized crime and preventing terrorist attacks.

The law is being sponsored by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN). Both parties have been in power during and have played a role in escalating the bloody war on drugs, which has killed over 166,000 and disappeared 28,000 over the last decade.

The National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and the Party for Democratic Revolution (PRD), the nominal “left” Mexican bourgeois parties, have opposed the legislation from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. “The drafting of the law does not express clearly that the Mexican Army is the only one that can perform interior security functions,” stated PRD congressman Alejandro Ojelda. Similarly, Morena congressman Paulo César Martínez López has noted the proposed law “opens the door to military operations by foreign armies.” In other words, the PRD and Morena want to ensure that the Mexican state will have the exclusive power to crack down on social opposition from the working class using military force.

Human rights groups and academics have widely denounced the proposed law, warning its adoption would gravely endanger human rights in the country. Over the past decade, the armed forces have been repeatedly found guilty of torture, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances. The Mexican Federal Police and the armed forces have been implicated in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, while in Tlatlaya, 22 civilians were executed by the 102nd Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army.

The Interior Security Law is being proposed in the context of an outbreak of social opposition against the policies of the Trump administration and the inability of the Mexican government to provide any defense for workers, youth and peasants on either side of the border.

Since the election of Trump, the Mexican government has been in crisis over how to balance its role as a junior partner of American imperialism and subdue mounting social anger at home over Trump’s bullying threats to deport millions of immigrants to Mexico, renegotiate NAFTA, build a border wall with Mexico, halt remittances to the country and send US troops to Mexico to take over the war on drugs.

The law also comes in the wake of mass demonstrations against the policies of the Peña Nieto administration, including the gazolinazo protests at the beginning of the year, when thousands of workers mobilized across the country to block roads and highways, taking over processing and distribution centers, and shutting down transit services in many parts of the country.

In July of last year, teachers went on strike in Oaxaca against the regressive education policies of Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico” in defense of public education. After 13 were killed and dozens wounded when the Mexican federal police fired at striking teachers, 200,000 doctors and nurses struck in solidarity with the protesting teachers, and students at major universities boycotted classes to show their support.

In response, the Mexican ruling elite is building up the military to prepare for open class conflict. Mexico’s weapons imports have more than tripled in the last five years, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Mexico is now the region’s second largest importer of weapons, buying $7.9 billion in military equipment in 2015 alone.

Through the government’s military sales program, the Obama administration sold over $2.5 billion in military equipment to Mexico from 2008 to 2016. Weapons purchased directly from US companies—another way the Mexican government can acquire US weapons—tripled to $2 billion from 2011 to 2012.

Aude Felurant, an SIPRI analyst specializing in Latin American affairs, characterized the weaponry being brought into Mexico, including thousands of Humvees, dozens of Blackhawks, and millions of rounds of ammunition, as “the type of equipment that is imported to carry out counterinsurgency measures.”

“Unlike what’s happening in the United States, this is your home,” the labor secretary, Amalia García, told deportees in the audience at a recent event for the city’s jobs programs.

For years, as the Obama administration sent back thousands of Mexicans each week -- more than two million altogether -- Mexico’s establishment barely reacted. All but invisible, the deportees were left to cope on their own with divided families, uncertain job prospects and the poverty that had pushed so many north in the first place.

Now, Mexican politicians are eagerly embracing them, portraying deportees as the embodiment of President Trump’s hostility toward their country and their people -- even though deportations of Mexican citizens actually fell in the opening months of his term.

Frankly, this is pure cosmetics.

First, no one welcomed the millions deported by the Obama administration. No one in the Mexican political class called Obama a "racista" or "anti-mejicano".

Instead, they said nothing publicly and went along, for whatever reason. This is not about greeting the new arrivals. This is about President Trump, the only thing that all parties in Mexico agree on.

As the article points, returning is not as easy as it sounds. The new arrivals need jobs and schools. Can Mexico provide the new arrivals with new jobs or schools? No simple answers! Why do you think they left in the first place?

Second, the real issue is the 10 or so million who are here sending funds back home. They are still sending the money, as we see in this CNN report:

Between January and November of 2016, $24.6 billion flowed back to the pockets of Mexicans from friends and relatives living overseas, according to Mexico's central bank.

That's even higher than what Mexico earns from its oil exports -- $23.2 billion in 2015.

And almost all of that cash comes from the U.S.

The average remittance from Mexico is about $300.

Essentially, Mexico's most lucrative natural resource are the people who leave home.

Remittances help drive Mexico's economy, from paying for new home construction to schools, especially in low-income areas.

The cash transfers from the U.S. have also been growing faster than wages and inflation.

This is the group that Mexico will have a lot of trouble welcoming back. Unfortunately, Mexico has become so dependent on these billions of dollars that the only thing they can hope for is that they are legalized in the U.S. and continue the remittances.